Game Thoughts

Well, Diablo 3 really had timing that's perfect in at least one sense - it provided a little bit of distraction without sucking me into any darker recesses. The "fun" of playing wore off for me getting into Hell difficulty. And while I've pushed a character to level 60 in Act 4, I see no reason to struggle through Inferno. And shortly after any real charm the game still had wore off for me, the real money auction house finally went live - just in time to not actually tempt me. I guess it remains a game I can boot up and play for half an hour or so in the background before becoming bored. The frustrating parts are too frustrating and the rewarding parts aren't very rewarding. Worth more than the $0 I paid for it, but I'm glad I didn't buy it off the shelf - which is what I expected long ago, even if the details of reality vary.

I don't know if this thread will survive, but it damnably funny in its sarcastic praise.


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Many exploits remain after 1.03

First, thank you for addressing so many of the important issues in this patch. After playing a couple of quests tonight, however, I've realized that the fight against exploiters will never truly be won.

•DPS is still way out of control - in some cases I've even seen players kill certain monsters before they were killed themselves
•People are still taking advantage of skills with unintended effects such as increased survival, damage output, and situation control
•There are several chests that continue to drop gold when opened; there are also still other, more nefarious means of gold farming, such as killing enough monsters that you actually MAKE more gold than your repairs cost
•I personally witnessed an incident where a player found a yellow item, and when they identified it, it had stats that could be exploited to increase their combat effectiveness - for the class they were playing at the time.
•Some gear seen on vendors still had stats other than Vitality that could, in the hands of an insidious agent, theoretically be employed toward the end of making combat easier (less dying, and in extreme cases, more killing)
•Bosses are still able to be killed by players - I don't have screenshots to prove this, but it is happening. Hopefully your data analysis can pick it up.
•Some bosses and rares are failing to properly spam stun, wall, poison, set afire, teleport into pools of acid, knockback, slow, and freeze players simultaneously while they teleport-kite the player at supersonic speed, carpeting every square inch of the zone with toxic ooze and letting their invulnerable minions with boss powers one- and two-shot us.
•I personally was able to set up a bizarre configuration in the auction house search panel where I could find items with specific stats and also be able to sort them in a way that was not effectively random.
•A friend of mine told me they were playing with some person earlier who - and I'm just the messenger here - seemed like they might be having fun while playing the game. I don't know how true this is, but if it's even a possibility, god help us all.

I'm just trying to do my part to ensure this kind of disgusting and cowardly behavior gets stamped out as soon as possible. If there's anything I hate in a game, it's feeling like I'm getting more powerful and that my time and efforts are culminating in some kind of... /shudder... progression. I'm in this for the frustration and disappointment, 100%, and I stand behind you with every patch that brings us closer to those ideals.

Keep up the great work.
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I heard some impressions from a couple people who had tried a recent beta for The Secret World. Being able to change equipment (and thus builds) on the fly sounds nice. The setting seems sufficiently creepy urban fantasy. I'm given to understand the voice work is quite good (though the PCs are silent). I'm not convinced that's enough to make up for the fact that they're launching with a subscription model even if the price has yet to be announced. That's a harder and harder sell these days, and while something like Bioware + Star Wars might be able to pull it off, I don't think I see that here. I've considered it before, probably when SWTOR was back on the horizon, but overcoming the momentum of an established game is tough, especially in a game style where you can't simply throw fancier graphics around and say it's better.

Meanwhile, SWTOR seems to be considering dropping its subscriptions. It's not a certain thing at this point, but there have been a couple quotes recently about the possibility. That would probably get me playing again, at least a little bit. But it's always more complicated than flipping a switch - you get an influx of players and have to have some way to generate the revenue to keep up with them. But is that better than the alternative of a shrinking (though still over a million last time I saw numbers) active subscriber base? The answer for that is going to vary from game to game.

And at the same time, we have Guild Wars 2's Arenanet talking about fun as a metric of success. Y'know, I want to give these guys the benefit of the doubt and I respect their idealism, but posts like that make my "PR Sense" tingle. Sure, that all sounds great, but while fun may bring players, it does not inherently pay the bills. Upkeep and expansion of an MMO is a costly affair and while more players does mean more chance of people biting in a cash shop, you still have to make sure they actually do. Without generating too much backlash. Whee. Nevermind that what's fun for one person is not fun for another.

So far, I love the game's ambiance. I think the only thing that would make it better for an active roleplayer would be player-changeable sandbox areas. And yet, no part of the actual gameplay has yet impressed me and I've found a few elements off-putting. The experience has not been any more fun to me than any other RPG I've played recently, really. But those have been beta weekends, too, so I'm far from rendering a final verdict.

I also got to hear from someone who had put in some time with a beta of Mechwarrior Online. I have a great affection for the Battletech setting, especially the earlier eras (and this game is set shortly before the Clan invasion, with a 1:1 time advancement already in progress). But all those wonderful memories of games that would now look too clunky to play aren't quite enough to get me into a game that is, essentially, all about PVP matches. It sounds pretty awesome, especially if playing as a group with light mechs spotting and coordinating with heavier ones. But my aversion to competitive play it probably going to keep me from really experiencing it.

There is, however, Mechwarrior Tactics being worked on as well. And it appears to be a turn-based, online emulation of the Battletech board game. Player(s) enter turn actions and see them play out simultaneously, with hex map overlays for command turns and such. Very neat. And it sounds like they intend to have PVE, though not necessarily in the form of a campaign. That might be something to sink a little time into for entertainment when it's live, even if I doubt it will be as awesome to me as playing through Crescent Hawk's Revenge the first time. Really, I want another Mech Commander game - that's about the right level of tactical combat and control for my tastes.

Of course, in all the talk about Battletech games, my mind turned back to the issue of the "Unseen" - classic mechs that no longer appear in the game due to a licensing issue. Perhaps the most objective write-up I've seen on that mess is here, though the precise details seem to elude even the mighty internet due to pre-1990 paper trails and confidential lawsuit settlements. It's fascinating in a way.